Ur Energy Inc Common Shares (Canada)

Greetings. Welcome to the UR Energy Q1 2026 conference call and webcast. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If anyone should require operator assistance during the conference, please press star zero on your telephone keypad. Please note this conference is being recorded. I will now turn the conference over to Alex Ritchie, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. You may begin.

Thank you. Today's discussion includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations and assumptions and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially. We do not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements except as required by law. Today's presentation includes disclaimers relating to forward-looking statements, risk factors, and projections, along with cautionary notes to investors. Please review these carefully together with the risk factors described in our Form 10-K and our other public filings with the SEC and Canadian securities regulators. I'll now turn the call over to our CEO and President, Matt Gilley.

Thank you, Alex, on slide three. And thank you, everyone, for joining us today. In addition to Alex, joining me on the call are Roger Smith, our CFO, Steve Hatton, our Chief Operating Officer, Ryan Shearman, VP of Regulatory Affairs, and Jane Wally, VP of Finance. It is an exciting time to be a U.S. training producer. the nuclear and uranium market environment continues to strengthen and support our long-term growth strategy. Electricity demand growth driven by AI data center development is increasingly pushing the world towards nuclear energy for clean, reliable, baseload power. Nuclear momentum continues to build through reactor restarts, life extension programs, and SMR development initiatives. Recently, countries such as South Korea, Taiwan, and Japan that depend on LNG imports have increased efforts to restart their or expand nuclear generation in response to the closing of the Straits of Hormuz. And just a few weeks ago, TerraPower broke ground on the first utility-scale advanced nuclear power plant here in the state of Wyoming. At the same time, U.S. government policies and programs are supporting domestic nuclear fuel supply chains and regulatory reforms intended to accelerate nuclear deployment. In January, the Department of Energy announced approximately $2.7 billion in contract awards to support the development of domestic low-enriched uranium and HIASI low-enriched uranium enrichment capacity. Long-term demand growth is expected to require significant new mine development. And while the nuclear industry is increasingly focused on a secure uranium supply, only about 4% of uranium deliveries to U.S. utilities in 2024 were U.S. origin. We believe these market tailwinds continue to highlight the strategic importance of domestic uranium production. Now let's talk about we, UR Energy, are doing to contribute to the transformation of the nuclear industry. Slide four. The first quarter of 2026 brought several meaningful operational wins as we continue executing on our uranium production growth strategy. At Lost Creek, We improved our operational performance, which reflects the work we've been doing to improve flow rates. We captured 110,000 pounds on resin during the first quarter. That is an increase of 41% over the last quarter and 48% more than the first quarter of 2025. We dried and packaged 96,000 pounds during the quarter and increased finished inventory at the conversion facility to more than 417,000 pounds, which is a 14% increase since year end. We also continue to improve our cost profile at Lost Creek. The average cash cost per pound sold dropped 13% quarter over quarter to $37.5 per pound. This cost amount per pound includes ad valorem and severance taxes. We sold 55,000 pounds during the quarter, which was in line with our committed delivery schedule. Note that our delivery schedule for 2026 is heavily weighted towards the second half of the year as we continue to ramp up with both months. Our average sales price was $71 per pound, which is a 12% increase over the fourth quarter of 2025, as our sales this quarter were under newer contracts with more favorable pricing structures. We ended the quarter with $123 million of unrestricted cash. On slide five, Lost Creek. Looking forward to Lost Creek, we drummed over 57,000 pounds in April. That's our highest monthly total since we decided to ramp up operations in 23. Our production trend at Lost Creek continues to move in the right direction, but we are still focused on better optimizing operations and increasing production rates. We've made some great strides ramping up production rates at Lost Creek. However, our flow rates continue to be impacted by fine particles from the host formation. To manage these fines, we are installing and commissioning a sand filter system that is on schedule to come online this quarter. Our 2026 production plans in the wellfield are focused on phase two of the first mine unit, mine unit number one. These plans remain on schedule, with the new header house continuing to come online. We continue to prepare for the next mine unit, mine unit five, to come online in 2027. Again, while production is trending in the right direction, we believe the specific initiatives that are underway position Lost Creek for stronger production performance as the year progresses. Slide six, Shirley Basin operations. The company reached a major milestone in April when we commenced initial mining operations at our Shirley Basin mine. After Wyoming regulators completed their inspection, we brought our first header house online and we are now capturing uranium on resin from production solutions. Construction and wellfield development activities at Shirley Basin accelerated and have progressed significantly during the first quarter. By the end of the quarter, we had pilot drilled 540 production and injection wells cased 312 of these wells, and constructed five header houses. We've been operating eight drills in line with our production needs. Shirley Basin is a satellite facility. We will be transporting uranium-loaded resin to Lost Creek for final processing and packaging. So our next major milestone is to start moving resin to Lost Creek. At this point, the infrastructure at Shirley Basin is substantially complete. Subject to our additional and final regulatory approval, we expect to start these shipments in the summer. This integrated operating model enhances efficiency, supports production scalability, and should substantially increase our uranium production. Curley Basin is a historically significant uranium district that played an important role in the early development of ISR mining in Wyoming, and we are on track to bring this back into commercial production soon. Flight 7, our Wyoming ISR drill portfolio. Beyond our operating projects, we continue exploration activities across our Wyoming project portfolio that will support development decisions. At our Lost Soldier project, we commenced aquifer testing in April and plan to start baseline environmental studies this year. We are on plan to have an updated technical report, including economics, completed by year end. There are 4,000 historic drill holes at Lost Soldier, and it is close to Lost Creek. the project has strong potential to be a future satellite operation that leverages our existing infrastructure we also completed 33 exploration drill holes at our north hassle project before the seasonal sage cross restrictions started in march the results include excuse me 13 ore grade intercepts and indicates potential for a stacked roll front isr system with up to eight individual roll fronts Looking ahead, we also have plans to begin a drill program of approximately 120 holes at our Lost Creek South property later this summer, with the goal to further extend Lost Creek into new mine units. And on slide 8, closing, we enter the second quarter with $123 million in cash, over 417,000 pounds of uranium inventory at the conversion facility, and momentum building on both of our operating mines. As we move through 2026, our priorities remain focused. Continue to increase flow rates and optimizing operations at Lost Creek. Achieve commercial production this summer at Shirley Basin, followed by production ramp up. Continue to advance our Wyoming exploration portfolio towards development decision. Continue to improve our safety culture and performance, which has already seen significant improvement. and meet our 2026 uranium sales agreement commitment from existing inventory and production. On that point, our production plans still support our potential to meet these commitments after commencing shipments from Shirley Basin, bringing the sand filters online at Lost Creek and our other initiatives to continue to increase production. As I mentioned, a substantial majority of our deliveries are scheduled for later in the year. We are capturing uranium at Shirley Basin. and are close to having two ISR uranium mines in commercial production. We are improving our production momentum, we are advancing our Wyoming ISR project pipeline, and we have a strong balance sheet. We are also bullish on the need for a larger supply of U.S.-produced uranium for an expanding nuclear industry. As one of the few U.S. uranium mining companies that is actually producing uranium, we believe your energy is well-positioned to help meet the growing demand. And with that, I'll turn the call back to the operator to open up the Q&A.

Certainly. At this time, we will be conducting a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star 1 on your telephone keypad. A confirmation tone will indicate your line is in the question queue. You may press star 2 if you would like to remove your question from the queue. For participants using speaker equipment, it may be necessary to pick up your handset before pressing the star keys. One moment, please, while we poll for questions. Your first question for today is from Heiko Ehle with HC Wainwright.

Hey, Matt and team. Nice little comprehensive overview you just gave. Thanks, Heiko. Can you give a bit of color on what you're seeing in conversations with your utility partners given the current geopolitical risk sectors that we're just seeing around the world? I mean, I assume that conversations, the tone is quite positive, but maybe you want to provide the audience with a bit of color on what you're seeing in the actual market.

Oh, absolutely, Heiko. Okay. So what we are seeing is a lot of activity from U.S. utilities in the first quarter regarding contracting future uranium supply. Now, of course, I mean, of course you would expect that, right? We're also seeing, I'm trying to be very careful. I don't want to ever disclose anything confidential. We're starting to see a lot more interest in securing supply over price negotiations. I wouldn't, you know, kind of in summary, I go without divulging anything confidential. There is a lot of energy right now regarding utilities looking to secure future supply. And of course, for utilities, future supply generally starts like three years out. But we're starting to see there's a lot of interest. We get a lot of inbound RFPs. We're very careful and choosy about what we respond to because we don't want to overcommit. We've got a very well-crafted you know, commitment forecast. And we like to keep pounds extra so that we have the ability to be flexible in the future. But it is very strong out there right now regarding those looking for pounds.

Fair enough. And then just for our model, how much money has been spent at Shirley Basin year to date? And maybe if you want to give a bit of color on the rest of the year quarter by quarter, please.

Absolutely. So what I have, I'm going to answer quickly and then I'm going to pass over to Roger to fill in the details. The entire commitment for Shirley Basin for capital this year remains at $25.5 million. Okay, so that's unchanged. Yes, unchanged. The total capital commitment for the water treatment upgrades at Lost Creek is now forecasted between 25 and 33 million dollars. What we did there is we've expedited and brought forward the building of those sand filters, which is critical to us meeting our production goals. And we'd have incurred a slight increase in expense by bringing those sand filters forward. Steve can go through that in more detail, but we're now at the stage, the sand filters are installed on a pad plant. We're piping in the sand filters, and we have the aggregate ready for installation within those sand filters. Steve, anything else you want to touch on that? No, I don't think so. Just know, Heiko, that we will be focusing and we are focusing on the very detailed engineering for the Lost Creek work, working already with the construction team as well, and getting procurement done as quickly as possible so we can really advance hard construction at Lost Creek this summer. But Shirley's moving along steadily. most of the main equipment and any of the things that you see on our site show you that. So we feel good about that. Roger, did you have any further color on the quantity at Shirley Basin we spent in the first quarter?

Yeah, just a bit. Hi, Heiko. Thanks for the question. During Q1, we spent approximately $11 million of that $25.5 million of CapEx for this year. So we have Probably just under $15 million you have to spend on Shirley Basin CapEx throughout the year.

Thanks, Roger, and thanks, Ivo, for the question. Eddie, does that cover what you're looking for?

It does, but would you want to guess a little bit on a quarterly basis, like a little bit more color?

Well, I don't want to guess. Look, Shirley Basin construction is heavily weighted towards the first half of the year. further quarters because we're in the very final stages of construction.

Fair enough. I will get back in queue. Thank you, guys. Thanks, Michael.

Your next question is from Anthony Tagliere with Canaccord Genuity.

Hey, man. Hey, thanks for taking my questions. Maybe just on Lost Creek. So noting the 57,000 pounds drummed in April. Should we expect this to be linear for the rest of Q2? Is there any reason why production in May and June might be a bit lower than April?

Well, again, I'm being very careful with putting out future guidance. I will say that in April, we actually exceeded our internal plan for production for the month of April. So April was a really good month. You talk about, you know, I would look at more linear from a quarter-to-quarter standpoint versus a month-by-month standpoint, peaking out with Shirley Basin, getting us to that 1.3 million pounds.

Okay, great.

So maybe just as a follow-up for Shirley Basin, you know, how's that startup been versus expectations? Maybe some commentary there would be great.

know what still needs to happen there from a regulatory point of view to begin shipping loaded resin to lost creek and when you say summer months is that sort of like a mid-june timeline okay so i'm going to answer the first question then hand over to ryan so look we we were uh our internal plan was that we would have the ability to add lexiviant and start uh liberating uranium by the end of april and we were able to timeline. So we were actually a few days, a week or two ahead of schedule. That's progressing very well on track. We're very excited about what we're seeing so far at Shirley Basin. Ryan, can you give more color into what is that final regulatory approval?

Yeah, so final regulatory approval is a pre-operational inspection. What this is is just a verification that infrastructure and our programs are in place to states when we do what we said we were going to. At this point, we don't believe we have anything that would preclude us from passing through that inspection. We've been preparing for it, and it's been on our radar. It's a regular part of business. Nothing out of the norm for us on that.

And, yeah, when we say when we expect to do that, again, being careful, but, you know, your original assumption was fairly on track of when we expect the timing.

Okay, great. I'll pass it on. Thanks for that. Thank you, Anthony.

Your next question for today is from Jeff Gramp with Northland Capital Markets.

Hey, good morning, Jeff. Hey, Matt. So outside of the wastewater and, excuse me, some of the kind of upgrades to address the fines issue, it sounds like there's some other general optimization initiatives at Lost Creek that you guys are working evaluating or implementing. I was just hoping to get a little more detail on what some of those other projects are and these kind of cost optimization, production optimization, or any other details you can share.

Okay. So the other main business improvement activities at Lost Creek are not capital improvements at all, but they're procedural and operational improvements. And they're specifically regarding our maintenance systems, just getting a well-built, well-articulated, and well-executed maintenance program for the plant itself, as well as bringing in procurement, getting it beefed up our procurement team and getting it aligned with maintenance so that, you know, your parts are there when you need them and your kits are ready when you need to do maintenance. Those are the two other initiatives, the primary initiatives at Lost Creek regarding beefing up operations.

Got it. Great. Appreciate that. My follow-up on the exploration side, specifically looking at Lost Soldier, I noted, and you guys are looking at kind of some pre-permitting activities, technical report coming later this year. Is the technical report, would you say, kind of a prerequisite, if you will, in getting some positive data there to kind of, I guess, more fully look at a full-blown kind of permitting exercise or How comfortable are you guys kind of trying to accelerate, you know, potentially permitting and getting that to production relative to, you know, technical report and more kind of technical evaluation internally? Thanks.

Yeah. Yeah, I understand. I understand your question, Jeff. It's a really good question. Look, we are progressing along with the technical report on the lost soldier, and we will do the work. To the standard, we always do the work, which is extremely high standard with economists. We have initiated or are in the process of initiating the baseline surveys as the beginning of our permitting because we feel very comfortable in spending that money before we finalize the technical report and make a construction decision. It's a modest spend at this time, but it is prudent and it will accelerate the permitting process should we make a positive investment decision at the end of this year.

Got it. And in general, you know, I'm not trying to hold you to too specific a timeline, but is, I don't know, two, three years a good kind of rule of thumb for running a project like that? Or am I one way or another?

I would say three to five years is a fair estimate.

Yeah. Three to five.

Perfect. Thank you, guys. I'll turn it back. Thank you, Jeff.

Your next question for today is from Joseph Rager with Roth Capital Partners.

Hey, Matt and team. Thanks for taking the questions. Most of my questions have already been touched on, but a couple other kind of fine-tuning things. Matt, in your preparing remarks, you commented on contracts being second-half weighted. Just because Q1 was so light that even if we put the rest of them evenly across the year, then it's going to be second half weighted? Or even over the remaining three quarters, is it still second half weighted?

Yeah, I mean, so it's weighted in the second half. You know how lumpy our delivery contracts are. And that's one of the consequences of the way that we contract is it comes in real lumpy. we focused our delivery commitments for the second half of the year to, let's be fair, to match our production profile for ramp-up, Joe. So we put out some guidance in the 10-Q to show the delivery commitments by quarter. They're weighted to the second half to match our production ramp-up. Joe, does that kind of answer the question you're looking for?

Yeah, yeah, no, it's fair. And then just in general, as you think about kind of how Lost Creek has performed since it restarted, there's been a number of challenges or hurdles as we've gone along from hiring to getting enough header houses built. But do you feel that the underlying resources performed as expected, and this is simply a matter of you got to get enough header houses built and operating so you can get production up to nameplate, or is there anything that, you know, has underperformed kind of under the hood that we haven't talked about yet?

Okay, very, very good question, Joe. All right, so in Lost Creek, and this is reflected in our updated technical report earlier this year, lost creek has demonstrated the ability to produce uranium as an ore body the resource is very solid we've updated that resource and we're very confident in that resource and to the point we actually added almost four million pounds into that resource so the resource itself and the ability to get uranium into solution has been been very well documented as And there were challenges in the startup, and labor was tight, and drill rigs were tight, and all those things. We've worked our way through all those things. The thing that is hindering us from increasing ramp up even further right now is those fines that are coming in from the well field. It's important to note our hypothesis right now. Those fines aren't really present in the ore body. They appear to be iron mineralization that is being liberated Kind of the same process with the oxygen that we're adding into the – the lexivian oxygen we're adding into the solution is also oxidizing some iron mineralization. We refer to it colloquially as orange grunge that comes out on top of our resin columns. So we really see – well, we didn't anticipate needing pre-filter into the plant before. We now have – we're installing the sand filters so that we have – we're pre-filtering all of the solution coming into the plant. As well as on all the header houses we've installed, all the new header houses for my unit one, we have installed filtration at the discharge of the production wells as well. So, I mean, in summary, very confident in the resource at Lost Creek. And it's demonstrated, it's proven itself multiple times as being there and being very amenable to what we do. So, again, very confident in the resource itself. I don't have something that's hidden that I don't think you know about and really see the solution to the fines as being the next major change, inflection point in the production ramp-up curve of Lost Creek.

Okay. Thanks, Matt. It's good to hear. I just had to ask, obviously.

Yeah, 100%. It's a good question. Very good question, Joe. Okay. Okay.

Once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one. Your next question for today is from Sandara Iyer with B Reilly Securities.

Hi, Matt and team. Congratulations on the quarter. So I just have two questions, starting with the realized price. you realized about $71 a pound on Q1 sales, which was a meaningful step up from last quarter and last year. So how should we think about the blended realization as we go into the second half of 2026?

Yeah, very good questions. Yes, we've disclosed this in the same queue as well. We have committed to deliver 1.3 million pounds for the year, and we expect that realized price from that 1.3 million pounds to be $83.2 million. So that tells you what the blended, you do that math and you see what the blended price is for the year. The 71 that we received in the first quarter was a good contract, relatively better than some of the other contracts we're delivering into this year.

Got it. That's helpful.

And then on just the macro front, the U.S. uranium, we have just a handful of producers with permitted ISR sites. How are you thinking about the M&A landscape right now or going through 2026? What's the appetite for organic growth or inorganic growth in this industry today?

Okay, so very probing question. Look, I believe that all of the CEOs you talk to are going to tell you that we are in a period that appears to be amenable, I'm being very careful in my words here, appears to be amenable to consolidation. And so it's a very exciting time to be a uranium producer in the United States. There is opportunity. for consolidation, and we at UR Energy are very well placed to participate in that consolidation. We are producing today. We're located in – our corporate headquarters are in Casper, Wyoming, and we have a very healthy balance sheet with the cash necessary to utilize for high-quality opportunities should they arise.

I will now hand the floor over to Valerie to moderate webcast questions.

Thank you. Our first question, we touched on this earlier. Can you describe some of the terms on the long-term contracts that you've signed recently?

We don't disclose that. I mean, what I can tell you is the present appetite for long-term contracts right now, and I'm really regurgitating what Cameco talks about quite a bit. You know, you see your term price. Your term price is in the low 90s right now, and that's all these prices being escalated to typically around 3%. But you're seeing the term price being around the low 90s. You're starting – you see – Almost all contracts now include a portion of the delivery that is market-related with floors and ceilings. The floors and ceilings typically run kind of right now in the kind of 80 as a floor and towards 120 as a ceiling. Each one of these contracts is different. Each one of these contracts has its own nuance. And I'm really just regurgitating what you've heard Grant at Cameco disclose. So I'm being a little careful, but that's generally the industry trend right now.

Okay. There are no more questions from the webcast.

All right. Thank you, Valerie.

There are no further questions from the phone lines. I will now hand the floor back to management for closing remarks.

Thank you, everyone, for participating in the call today. Really a very strong quarter from the standpoint of the ramp-up at Lost Creek and Shirley Basin. We're very proud of the activities we've completed. We're very, very energized by what we're seeing going forward. We look forward to 2026 to be a real inflection year for UR Energy. And we're proud to be part of the U.S. nuclear fuel cycle. So thank you, everyone, for joining today.

This concludes today's conference and you may disconnect your lines at this time. Thank you for your participation.